


all of the things he (almost) never said

by zweebie



Series: Reddie Drabbles/Ficlets [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff, Confession, Eddie Lives, Ficlet, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Oneshot, Post-Canon, Rated teen and up for language, Richie saves Eddie, i genuinely don't know what it is except that i needed it so that i would stop djskfh CRYING, post chapter 2, this is the most self-indulgent thing i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 17:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20878097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zweebie/pseuds/zweebie
Summary: Richie’s hands are shaking. Shaking because they’d just hauled him all the way up the rocks into the sewers, up a rope into a fucking old-school eighties-movie haunted house. Shaking because they’d just been holding the still-beating heart of a fucking clown, or ancient curse, or edritch monster or whatever the fuck it is they’ve decided to call it. Shaking because it’s been over twenty-four hours since he’d last slept.And shaking because he was that close—mere inches away—from losing Eddie Kaspbrak.





	all of the things he (almost) never said

Richie’s hands are shaking. Shaking because they’d just hauled him all the way up the rocks into the sewers, up a rope into a fucking old-school eighties-movie haunted house. Shaking because they’d just been holding the still-beating heart of a fucking clown, or ancient curse, or edritch monster or whatever the fuck it is they’ve decided to call it. Shaking because it’s been over twenty-four hours since he’d last slept. And shaking because he can’t stop seeing the image of  _ it’s  _ claw, spearing Eddie’s upper arm. Shaking because the wound is so close to Eddie’s chest, because they were just a couple scrawny inches away from losing him. 

He’s still shaking as the house collapses in on itself, leaving nothing but a gaping hole. He’s shaking as he wraps his shirt around Eddie’s bicep, tight as he can. He’s shaking as they climb over the safety fence, out at the quarry where they’d played when they were kids. He’s shaking when Eddie tells them that “Statistically it’s even worse to be washing yourself in fucking pond water than it is to just wait. You know that, right? You know that this is basically inviting an infection, right?” Richie is shaking even as he smiles, laughs.

He’s shaking as they jump into the quarry, the sky too big above them, the water too bitingly cold. 

He’s shaking because if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed Eddie, if he hadn’t pushed him, he would still be down there. He would be rotting in that fucking  _ literal  _ hellhole, and he would be gone gone gone and they would never see him again. Never hear him speak. Richie would probably go batshit crazy.

It’s unthinkable. Richie can’t stop thinking about it.

When they reach the hospital, and Eddie makes them all go into the emergency room ( _ “Do you even know what might have happened if you had gotten scratched in there? There could have been bacteria millions of years old in that cave, stuff that—stuff that—who even knows if we have a cure for it yet—and if some of that stuff got into your bloodstream you could realistically die—”)  _ Richie can’t quite get his breath. Because every time he looks at Eddie, he’s taken aback by what he almost lost the chance for. What he never did. What he never said. It hangs heavy in his chest, heavier than the joy he thought he’d feel when they finally won.

Richie sits next to Eddie’s hospital bed a few hours later. They’ve decided to keep him in for a couple of days, just to monitor the wound. 

“So, did you see that last marvel movie?” Eddie says. The first words spoken since Richie walked into the room and sat down.

“Huh?” Richie had thought the first conversation topic to come to mind would be nearer to the fucking killer clown, ancient curse, or eldritch monster (or whatever the fuck it is they’d decided to call it) they’d just killed. But.

“Civil War, or something.” Eddie says, picking at his cuticles. Richie’s heart hurts. “You used to leave the comics all over my fucking floor, if I remember right.”

Richie laughs. “Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that,” he says, fondly enough.

“Well, did you see it?”

“I didn’t have time. I had a gig in LA when it came out, and I guess I just never got around to it.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, and then lets out a little huff of laughter. “Yeah, it really fucking does. We would have been sitting out wrapped in blankets outside the movie theater until it opened, if it had come out when we were kids. You would have spent the whole thing bitching about hypothermia or some other condition.”

“And I would have been totally fucking justified! Sitting out in the damp all night, in the middle of spring, and I’m more prone to—well, I thought I was more prone to it, I guess. But it’s still a realistic risk. That’s the leading reason—that’s why everyone  _ gets  _ hypothermia, that’s the thing, because they assume it’s not an issue. I mean, we could have gotten seriously sick.”

Richie scoffs. “We  _ didn’t.”  _

Eddie frowns. “See, if that’s the sort of mindset you’re going to go into everything with, you’re gonna get killed in no time, Richie, and god knows I’m going to have to clean up the mess, and—” he cuts himself off, and they sit in silence for a moment more.

Richie doesn’t ask him what he was going to say. His mind is full of endless summers, babbling creeks, sunbathed pavement. “It was a good time. When we were kids, I mean.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes, smiling fondly at his lap.

“The best.”

Eddie nods, and there’s something in his face, and again, Richie feels that pain in his chest.

And fuck it.

“Eddie, you almost—”

Eddie interrupts him immediately, as if he’d been waiting for this. “I don’t want to talk about it—”

“No, but I—”

“Shut the fuck up, it’s over, that’s all that—”

“Please, Eds—”

“Don’t call me  _ fucking Eds _ —”

“You almost  _ died!” _

“We all almost died, Richie, not just me—” Eddie starts.

“Then maybe this is even more important, then! Stan is—he was gone,  _ is  _ gone, and I almost died too, and then Bill and Ben and Beverly and Mike and  _ you,  _ and I just kept thinking  _ god  _ if you went and fucking died on me before I could tell you…” He trails off.

“Tell me what, Richie?” Eddie asks, and his voice is sharp in a heartbreakingly familiar way. He’s looking straight at Richie for the first time since Richie walked into his hotel room. 

Richie looks back at him, and he drinks it in. The sight of the bravest fucking man he knows, who had the balls to spear Pennywise through the throat even though he was scared shitless. The sight of the little firecracker hypochondriac of a kid, who always snapped and swore and told him to shut the fuck up and clung to him when things got dark. The sight of the boy who, before any of this ever happened, who when they were just little kids, already made Richie’s heart do that fluttering, floating thing. Fuck.

Richie imagines one last time where he would be, now. Probably in his hotel room, crying himself dry, to be honest. And after that, at Eddie’s apartment, packing up his things. Thinking back on all of the things he never said. Or maybe he would still be down in that cave, crushed under the rubble. Maybe that would be better.

Well, there’s nothing to lose now. “I loved you. I love you. I’m  _ in  _ love with you. That’s it,” Richie says, quicker than he should.

“Come here,” Eddie says.

Richie stares at him. “The fuck do you mean? To your bed? You know this place has security cameras, right? If you’re thinking what I think you’re—”

“No, dumbass, just...scoot your chair over or something.”

“Or I could just—” Richie stands up tentatively.

“Yeah, okay, that. Just hurry the fuck up.”

Richie steps over and kneels down beside the bed. “Now’s the part where you confess your dying love for me, Eddie Spaghetti,” he says, and he’s not even scared. Not half as scared as he thought he’d be. Even if Eddie rejects him now, he’s still alive. He’s still here, and he’ll be in the world doing all of his dumbass things and being just as anxious and hyperactive and angry and wonderful as always.

Eddie takes Richie’s face in his hands, and Richie thinks  _ oh.  _ “You know, you calling me that is really fucking ruining the moment,” Eddie says, and Richie barely opens his mouth to respond before Eddie leans forward, tilting his head and shutting his eyes and  _ there it is  _ pressing his lips to Richie’s. 

And holy shit. This is fucking it. There’s blood in his hair, probably, and Eddie is in a hospital gown, and they’ve lost more than Richie could ever have imagined. And twenty seven years,  _ twenty seven goddam years  _ flash through Richie’s mind—countless sleepovers and nights spent giggling over comics and older years, teenage years, when things got heavy and their hands would brush together and whatever it is between them was  _ wrong, unnatural, immoral,  _ but goddamit, maybe they’re alive, and they’re together, and maybe more things are possible than he’d thought.

Richie’s eyes flutter open as they pull apart. “I guess this is a bad time to tell you I have mono,” he says.

“You’d better be fucking kidding, trashmouth,” Eddie says, and then Richie laughs, and Eddie laughs, and Richie pulls him in and buries his head in his neck and he’s just so goddamn, unimaginably and completely relieved. 

**Author's Note:**

> I CAN'T SAY HOW MUCH I'VE SOBBED OVER THIS MOVIE F U C K 
> 
> i wrote this ninety nine percent to make myself feel better but y'all can have it i guess. I hope you liked reading it, and thank you!! I promise i have some more creative fix-it ideas and a few other au's in the works, but i needed to write this just to get my emotions in check! as always, please leave a comment and/or kudos if you liked it and hmu on twitter at @wylan_vaneck or on tumblr at @we-never-stop-fighting!


End file.
